Black Brother Oneshots

Sirius and Azkaban (a thought dump)

Hey, everyone! So, I've been thinking about this a lot, and it's really just been a jimble jumble in my brain, and so I thought I'd attempt to turn this into a coherent thread of words and show you all the thinking that I've put into this. Also trigger warning, lots of mentions of abuse.

So, this has been discussed a lot, but I was very confused still about how people actually believed Sirius was a Death Eater and betrayed James and Lily. Obviously, if people had never met the pair, it would be obvious how they came to that conclusion. But they were at Hogwarts together from 1971-1978, which means THOUSANDS of people would've never seen "one without the other" (according to POA) and yet still no one questioned this? At all? Sure, people are two faced sometimes, but normally if you compare two people to being closer than brothers, you'd assume there would be some questioning.

Also, you mean to tell me that Remus Lupin didn't have suspicions that Sirius was innocent? Even a small inkling that, "This can't be right?". My brain reached the conclusion that, no, it's not possible he didn't have a doubt about it in the beginning.

Here me out:

Right after James and Lily's death, and Sirius's sentence, Remus goes to Dumbledore with suspicions. Sure, he believes Sirius to be the secret keeper, but still something doesn't sit right. Maybe Sirius had written down the password and the Order's spy found it. Maybe one of his cousin's tortured him into saying it, or maybe he was talking in his sleep. Whatever it was, Remus had his doubts that Sirius is fully to blame.

The thing that Remus believes isn't that Sirius is a Death Eater, or that Sirius betrayed Lily and James, it's that he killed the muggles in the alleyway. He wouldn't do it on purpose, I feel like Remus would assume, but no matter if it's an accident or not, it's still manslaughter, and even if Remus tried to pursue a court case (if he could, that is. Remus legally wouldn't be able to get Sirius a court case because of his lycanthropy. This court case scenario is if he convinced someone else (probably Minnie because Dumbles is kinda useless at this stuff) to help him get Sirius a trial) he wouldn't be able to get him out of charges of manslaughter (in his mind at least, there were plenty of evidence that he wasn't at fault but I'll get into that later) and ON TOP of that, Sirius would also have time added on for being an illegal animagus, which is also something one can be sent to Azkaban for. Which meant the only thing truly cleared would be the fact that Sirius wasn't like his family, which honestly would've done wonders for Sirius's mental health. And on top of that, Remus would probably visit Sirius in Azkaban, which would be amazing.

Now, what I'm getting at is that if Remus had done this, the Ministry would've known he was an animagus and therefore would've taken precautionary measures, making it near impossible for Sirius to escape. BUT, it's also very possible that Remus could spend his years alone gathering up evidence against the fact that Sirius didn't commit manslaughter (the most sound evidence I stated earlier would be Peter's finger. As stated in the book, it was chopped off, which meant that it would've been a clean cut. And if Peter had truly been decimated, the cut wouldn't be clean, would it? It would be a jagged cut. Also, there would be ashes of Peter's remains, or at least part of a charred body. If there wasn't any evidence of the people left behind, it would've been impossible to say that Sirius had - for certain - killed twelve muggles. The number wouldn't have been able to be classified.) Call me a lawyer because I think I got the case solved.

Now, because of this evidence, brought up to the Ministry by none other than Minnie McG because we all know she also had doubts, Sirius's sentence would be reduced from lifelong (the sentence for manslaughter) to the sentence for an illegal animagi (which can't be more than five years because it's not that large of an offence.) and if the evidence took more than 5 years to gather (which it shouldn't) than Sirius would already be freed. If not, he'd stay the five years, and be freed at the end of his term.